On its website, MDA sums up the threat – current and near-term – as a shift from the Cold War strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction, in which the United States and Soviet Union were the only real protagonists, to a multipolar world in which more and more nations are acquiring not only advanced missile technology, but also warheads classified as WMDs.

“Countries invest in ballistic missiles because they are a means to project power both in a regional and strategic context and a capability to launch an attack from a distance. Presently, sophisticated ballistic missile technology is available on a wider scale than ever to countries hostile to the U.S. and our allies. As those countries continue to develop and exchange this technology, there is also an increasing threat of those technologies falling into the hands of hostile non-state groups,” according to MDA.

“The intelligence community states that current trends indicate that proliferation of ballistic missile systems, using advanced liquid- or solid-propellant propulsion technologies, are becoming more mobile, survivable, reliable, accurate and capable of striking targets over longer distances. The proliferation of ballistic missiles is increasing the number of anti-access weapons available to potential regional adversaries. These weapons could be used to reduce military options for Combatant Commanders and decrease the survivability of regional military assets.”

That threat escalated once again on Dec. 12, 2012, when North Korea finally succeeded in launching a satellite into orbit, something South Korea has yet to accomplish, making the Communist North the world’s newest space-capable nation – but, more importantly, giving it a major boost in the development of long-range ballistic missiles.

Combined with North Korea’s previous successful test of an atomic bomb, that significantly increases the threat to South Korea, Japan, and even the United States. The missile launch, timed to mark the anniversary one year earlier of the death of dictator Kim Jong Il, drew immediate protests, not only from those nations, but also from North Korea’s other neighbor, China, and the UN Security Council.

While most nations only have the ability to threaten their immediate neighbors with missiles, the North Korean launch potentially puts it in a far more elite group that includes (in order of first space launch) Russia, the United States, France, Japan, China, the United Kingdom, India, Israel, Ukraine, and Iran – eight of which (including North Korea) also possess nuclear weapons and other WMDs. At least 20 other nations possess ballistic missiles capable of reaching targets at distances of 120 km to 700 km, and others, such as Pakistan and Brazil, are working on a space launch capability. In April 2013, tensions were once again high on the Korean peninsula, with another missile launch by North Korea expected at any time by U.S. officials.

Among the defenses against military missile launches, one of the oldest, most widely deployed and most heavily used is the U.S. Army’s Patriot, first delivered by prime contractor Raytheon and deployed to Germany in 1982. Since then it has undergone a number of upgrades (currently on Build 7), with some 200 fire units (comprising up to eight launchers, each holding four ready-to-fire missiles) currently deployed by the United States, the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Taiwan, Greece, Spain, Korea, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Another 50 or so fire units are on order.

In addition, on Dec. 14, 2012, then- Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta announced that the U.S. was sending two batteries of Patriot missiles and 400 troops to Turkey as part of a NATO force intended to counter potential Syrian missile attacks.

Tim R. Glaeser, who commanded U.S. Army and Kuwaiti Patriot forces during Operation Iraqi Freedom, is now vice president and business development executive for Raytheon Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD), where current and future upgrades are under way. The most recent, making Patriot once again state-of-the-art, resulted from the 2008 UAE order, which largely funded a complete re-engineering of the missile’s systems.

Those included a faster, more accurate guidance system known as GEM-T, or Guidance Enhanced Missile TBM (tactical ballistic missile), and a new radar digital processor (RDP), which goes into the back of the radar shelter, replaces 19 racks of existing equipment, and upgrades the radar from analog to digital.

“As a result, we can make future upgrades via software rather than hardware modifications,” he told Defense. “So the radar now can see farther, detect targets with smaller cross-sections at difficult angles, and do classification, discrimination, and identification of threats versus non-threats.

“On the C2 side, we inserted the Modern Adjunct Processor [MAP], a chassis with a series of single computers – COTS capability – so when a single board computer becomes obsolete or we want to make changes, we can slide out that circuit board and replace it. The MAP has 16 available expansion slots and we are only going to populate about 25 percent of that initially. So we can improve the weapons system in the future three or four times and keep it ahead of anything the adversaries may come up with.”

Other improvements to the launcher component include 30-inch touchscreen color displays in the Modern Manned Stations. As replacements for the old monochrome CRTs, the new screens are software programmable, reducing the need for future hardware changes, and allow faster recognition of color-coded targets. The new launcher has been successfully demonstrated with the upgraded PAC-3 interceptor.

“Patriot is the cornerstone of any integrated air and missile defense architecture. The U.S. government was looking to replace Patriot with MEADS, but in February 2011 decided not to procure MEADS but to continue to rely on Patriot improvements. The Army has said Patriot will be in U.S. Army formations to 2040 and beyond, so we have another three decades of growth opportunities to ensure Patriot stays ahead of any emerging threats,” Glaeser said.

“As we look to the future, we plan to put the Patriot weapons system into an open architecture with the U.S. Army’s battle command system capability and integrate additional sensors on the battlefield, as well as the potential for an elevated system such as JLENS [Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor], enabling us to see low-flying threats over the Earth’s curvature, giving us time to select the best interceptor. We’re also looking at a future upgrade to the Patriot radar to insert AESA technology.”